Al Shabab 2 Al Wahda 1
Shabab Ciel 17' and 90+4
Wahda Eisa Ahmed 21'
Red card: Carlos Villanueva (Shabab) 79'; Mohammed Al Shaibah 81' (Al Wahda)
Man of the Match: Ciel
DUBAI // Mohammed Al Shaibah seemed a man on a mission last night, determined to prove a point and he did just that.
Considered dispensable by Diego Maradona at Al Wasl and released after one Etisalat Cup game, the Omani defender, making his debut for Al Wahda following a loan move, was a live wire at Al Shabab last night, softening up the home side's most potent weapon Ciel with some bruising tackles.
The aggressive duel between Ciel and Al Shaibah was an interesting sideshow to the game, but it came to end in the 81st minute when the Wahda player launched into a karate-style tackle into the Brazilian, his boots into the Shabab striker's ribs. The referee Hamad Al Shaikh gave him the marching orders.
Two minutes earlier, he had flashed the red card for Shabab's Carlos Villanueva following the Chilean's off for an off-the-ball kick at Yaqoub Yousef.
With Al Shaibah off his back, Ciel got some breathing space and he booted home his second of the night, four minutes into added time, to give Shabab a hard-fought 2-1 win. He had opened the scores in the 17th minutes, but Eisa Ahmed equalised for the visitors four minutes later.
"I have seen a very intense, very close match with a very lucky winner," said Josef Hickersberger, the Wahda coach. "Congrats to Shabab. We put in a good fight, tried our best, but my players were not fresh enough. That is why they suffered from a lack of concentration and made some mistakes.
"We were punished for that. The first goal was a gift and if you make such mistakes it is difficult to win away against a team like Shabab."
It was a heartbreaking result for the Wahda fans. The team seemed to have brought their run of three consecutive defeats to an end going into added time. Had Ciel not side-volleyed Rashid Ahmed's cross into the back of the net, Wahda would have returned home with an away point and Al Shaibah would have been the unanimous choice for the player of the game.
"For me, the red card for Shaibah was not a red card," Hickersberger said. "It was just a compensation for the red card that the referee gave for Shabab earlier. In my opinion, it was clever acting by Ciel. He went into the duel with the aim of getting a foul.
"It was really unfortunate for Al Shaibah because he played really well. He had a difficult task in our gameplan, to play against Ciel on the flank. It is a position he has not played in before, but he did an excellent job, playing much better than I expected him to do.
"He had a flight from Australia [where he played in a World Cup qualifier for Oman] to Abu Dhabi and if you take the time difference into consideration, it is not easy."
The Omani earned praise from the Shabab manager Paulo Bonamigo as well. "Shaibah is a defender and a tough boy," he said. "The coach put him on the left to stop Ciel and he did his job really well.
"We had to swap Ciel to the other side and he scored from that side. So now we have the option of using him on both flanks in case the opposition device a plan for him on the left."
This string of defeats has left the Wahda fans an unhappy lot, but Hickersberger has promised good days ahead with the UAE national team players returning.
"We lost the Etisalat Cup matches [three] without eight or nine of our national team players," the Austrian said. "It [the defeats] is an important issue, OK, but the management know what kind of a coach I am. I believe I have the trust of Sheikh Saeed.
"All we have to do is to get the team working together because we did not have enough time to prepare the team for this match. The players arrived at four in the morning on Thursday and Friday we allowed them time to rejuvenate.
"So there was just one training before the match, but this is usual for clubs who have a lot of national players. Some coaches have called it the 'Fifa virus' and it is a disease difficult to cure."
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
U19 World Cup in South Africa
Group A: India, Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka
Group B: Australia, England, Nigeria, West Indies
Group C: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Scotland, Zimbabwe
Group D: Afghanistan, Canada, South Africa, UAE
UAE fixtures
Saturday, January 18, v Canada
Wednesday, January 22, v Afghanistan
Saturday, January 25, v South Africa
UAE squad
Aryan Lakra (captain), Vriitya Aravind, Deshan Chethyia, Mohammed Farazuddin, Jonathan Figy, Osama Hassan, Karthik Meiyappan, Rishabh Mukherjee, Ali Naseer, Wasi Shah, Alishan Sharafu, Sanchit Sharma, Kai Smith, Akasha Tahir, Ansh Tandon
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Scoreline
Bournemouth 2
Wilson 70', Ibe 74'
Arsenal 1
Bellerin 52'
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
PRISCILLA
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AUSTRALIA SQUAD
Aaron Finch, Matt Renshaw, Brendan Doggett, Michael Neser, Usman Khawaja, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Tim Paine (captain), Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Jon Holland, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Starc, Peter Siddle
Representing%20UAE%20overseas
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EQureos%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EUAE%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELaunch%20year%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2021%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E33%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESoftware%20and%20technology%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%243%20million%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
THE BIO
Favourite author - Paulo Coelho
Favourite holiday destination - Cuba
New York Times or Jordan Times? NYT is a school and JT was my practice field
Role model - My Grandfather
Dream interviewee - Che Guevara
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
Tesalam Aleik
Abdullah Al Ruwaished
(Rotana)
SPECS
Engine: Two-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 235hp
Torque: 350Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Price: From Dh167,500 ($45,000)
On sale: Now
Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH INFO
Red Star Belgrade v Tottenham Hotspur, midnight (Thursday), UAE
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950